Rajkumar Hirani hates attending private screenings of other directors’ films

By Mark Manuel

on July 02, 2018

Rajkumar Hirani, whose Friday release ‘Sanju’ has broken all box office records set during Eid by Salman Khan’s ‘Race 3’, once told me he’s not into money making or breaking records. “I want people to enjoy my films, collections are not my field, I’m not obsessed with making money. It’s sad a film is judged by the money it makes. The content is what stays with you when a film is good. A film should do well, but not at the cost of good content. I make the kind of films I enjoy watching and hope they will also be liked by some people at least,” he said.

Raju also admitted he gets scared when people tell him they are looking forward to his next release. “It’s like an exam,” he said, “you work so hard for it but you don’t know what marks you’ll score. You want your film to be as loved as the last one but you don’t know what the result will be.” His last film was Aamir Khan’s ‘PK’. And before that, ‘3 Idiots’, ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ and ‘Munnabhai M.B.B.S.’ All box office hits. I think Raju has done extraordinarily well for himself with ‘Sanju’ already. He made the biopic because he was fascinated by Sanjay Dutt’s life and what all had happened to him. Raju was sure there was a story to tell and he was determined not to glorify Dutt in the film. He was also aware that Ranbir Kapoor had no physical resemblance to Sanjay Dutt. “But a convincing suspension of disbelief can be achieved,” he assured me with a grin.

Raju then revealed a lesser known detail about himself to me. As one of Bollywood’s leading directors, he gets invited for the private screenings of other filmmakers’ releases. And if he doesn’t enjoy the film, he falls asleep! Here is one such incident in Raju Hirani’s own words: “Much to my embarrassment at one screening held by a friend at Gaiety cinema in Bandra, I fell asleep because the film was terrible. Then at the end, to my horror, I saw the filmmaker standing at the door asking people what they thought of his film. I was trapped, because I couldn’t lie, yet I didn’t want to be rude and hurt his sentiments. So I sneaked out of the rear exit and into the parking lot of the theatre. I jumped the wall, crossed the railway tracks, and took an autorickshaw home!”